News:

"There is a terrible desperation to the increasingly pathetic rationalizations from the climate denial camp. This comes as no surprise if you take the long view; every single undone paradigm in history has died kicking and screaming, and our current petroleum paradigm 🐉🦕🦖 is no different. The trick here is trying to figure out how we all make it to the new ⚡ paradigm without dying ☠️ right along with the old one, kicking, screaming or otherwise." - William Rivers Pitt

Topic Summary

Posted by: Surly1

Due to record summer temperatures in recent years, high Arctic polar terrain is changing. Credit: Melissa Ward Jones

Rapid changes in terrain are taking place in Canada's high Arctic polar deserts due to increases in summer air temperatures.

A McGill-led study published recently in Environmental Research Letters presents close to 30 years of aerial surveys and extensive ground mapping of the Eureka Sound Lowlands area of Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Islands located at approximately 80 °N. The research focuses on a particular landform (known as a retrogressive thaw slump) that develops as the ice within the permafrost melts and the land slips down in a horseshoe-shaped feature. The presence of these landforms is well documented in the low Arctic. But due to the extremely cold climate in high Arctic polar deserts (where average annual ground and air temperatures are -16.5 °C/2.3 °F, and -19.7 °C /-3.46 °F, respectively), and the fact that the permafrost is over 500 metres (or about 1/3 of a mile) thick, it had been assumed this landscape was stable. But the McGill-led research team found that this has not been the case.

"Our study suggests that the warming climate in the high Arctic, and more specifically the increases in summer air temperatures that we have seen in recent years, are initiating widespread changes in the landscape," says Melissa Ward Jones, the study's lead author and a Ph.D. candidate in McGill's Department of Geography.

The research team noted that:

There has been a widespread development of retrogressive thaw slumps in high Arctic polar deserts over a short period, particularly during the unusually warm summers of 2011, 2012 and 2015;

That the absence of vegetation and layers of organic soil in these polar deserts make permafrost in the area particularly vulnerable to increases in summer air temperatures;

Despite its relatively short duration, the thaw season (which lasts for just 3-6 weeks a year) initially drives the development of slumps and their later expansion in size, as their headwall retreats; and

Over a period of a few years after the initiation of slumps, study results suggest various factors related to terrain (e.g. slope) become more important than air temperature in maintaining active slumps.

In recent years, high summer temperatures have started melting the ice in the permafrost. As a result, land forms are changing unexpectedly. Credit: McGill University

"Despite the cold polar desert conditions that characterize much of the high Arctic, this research clearly demonstrates the complex nature of ice-rich permafrost systems and climate-permafrost interaction," adds Wayne Pollard, a professor in McGill's Department of Geography and co-author on the study. "Furthermore, it raises concerns about the over simplification of some studies that generalize about the links between global warming and permafrost degradation."

More information: Melissa K Ward Jones et al, Rapid initialization of retrogressive thaw slumps in the Canadian high Arctic and their response to climate and terrain factors, Environmental Research Letters (2019). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab12fd

Posted by: AGelbert

“Unless you have more aggressive policymaking,” says Bloomberg’s Zindler. “You don’t actually cut CO2 emissions sufficiently from the power sector and from the economy overall to basically have the U.S. make its contributions to reducing CO2 emissions.”

“In the absence of some kind of national program or policy,” agrees energy analyst Van Atten. “We shouldn’t expect to see some dramatic decline in emissions.”

Trump melted down today as questions about his shady financial history intensify

Recent photo of Trump

Trumplethinskin is getting rather desperate to wag the (i.e. raise the price of OIL for his Hydrocarbon 🦕👹🦖 Hellspawn owners - so they won't help throw him under the impeachment bus - while simultaneously taking the world's attention away from his rather blatant financial crimes history now being discussed here and there publicly) "evil Iran" dog.

It ain't workin' because way too many people are onto this false flag SCAM the US Government has used WAY TOO OFTEN (i.e. sinking the battleship Maine, Gulf of Tonkin, Bush fooling Saddam into invading Kuwait in 1991, 9/11, Shrub Iraq "WMD" lie, etc. SEE: 😈 One EVIL Trick Pony).

This comment I read today says it all:

Quote

DEDA CVETKO

Why should Iran talk to the US government? It was the Trump administration - at the behest and request of the Israelis and their Saudi brethren - that broke the Iran nuclear deal, not the other way around. And the wide consensus of the entire civilized world is that Iran did act honorably and did uphold its share of the deal. No doubt about this. None whatsoever. Donald Trump's foreign policy is scalp-deep in warmongering guilt, and sinking lower with each passing day. The only excuse Donald Trump has is that Hillary Clinton's administration would have done exactly the same, which is no excuse at all.

You know, your signature on a piece of binding international treaty - even when the signature is that of the preceding president - is not merely an autograph memorabilia. It is a serious, legally binding commitment which ties the entire nation into a very serious, meaningful set of interlocking, mutually reciprocal obligations with the contractual counterparty. An international contract actually obligates the signatory to act in a good-faith manner and to prevent deliberate sabotaging of the contract. If the word of honor of the great nations were as easily self-violated as the word of honor of dishonest individuals, this planet would be an uninhabitable horror. Which, essentially, is what it is now rapidly becoming.

A horrendous, irreparable damage - and extraordinarily dangerous one - has been done by Donald Trump's wanton and entirely unjustified retreat from the diplomatic deal with Iran. I think I speak for many people worldwide when I say that this may go down as the single worst diplomatic cataclysm in the entire American history replete with blunders, false flags and war provocations of all kinds - if not the history of the world. After all, from this moment on, the good faith and credit (and the word of honor) of American government ain't worth a pitcher of warm spit.

The only thing that makes Mother Earth habitable is the trust among humans. Even when the trust is involuntary, even when it runs counter to emotions and all reason, even when it is imposed between (presumably honorable) enemies, some trust must persist for our species to survive. Donald Trump just smashed that trust to smithereens.

Indeed. My only quibble with this fellow, who is probably an intelligent and perceptive Iranian, and obviously a caring, responsible human being, is the timing of when, precisely, the US Government declared war on ALL humanity.

I think it's been a while.

As long as 🦕 Iran, and all the other 🐉🦕🦖 countries that export oil and gas, keep doing that ☠️ instead of transitioning to 100% Renewable energy, they are on the wrong side of that war against ALL humanity.

The Antarctic’s Thwaites glacier. More than 50% of the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier basins have been affected by thinning in the past 25 years. Photograph: PA

Ice losses are rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic, new analysis of satellite data shows.

The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in the worst-hit places.

A complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would drive global sea levels up by about five metres, drowning coastal cities around the world. The current losses are doubling every decade, the scientists said, and sea level rise are now running at the extreme end of projections made just a few years ago.

The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, compared 800m satellite measurements of ice sheet height from 1992 to 2017 with weather information. This distinguished short-term changes owing to varying snowfall from long-term changes owing to climate.

“From a standing start in the 1990s, thinning has spread inland progressively over the past 25 years – that is rapid in glaciological terms,” said Prof Andy Shepherd, of Leeds University in the UK, who led the study. “The speed of drawing down ice from an ice sheet used to be spoken of in geological timescales, but that has now been replaced by people’s lifetimes.”

He said the thinning of some ice streams had extended 300 miles inland along their 600-mile length. “More than 50% of the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier basins have been affected by thinning in the past 25 years. We are past halfway and that is a worry.”

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Researchers already knew that ice was being lost from West Antarctica, but the new work pinpoints where it is happening and how rapidly. This will enable more accurate projections to be made of sea level rises and may aid preparations for these rises.

In the recent past, snow falling on to Antarctica’s glaciers balanced the ice lost as icebergs calved off into the ocean. But now the glaciers are flowing faster than snow can replenish them.

“Along a 3,000km [1,850-mile] stretch of West Antarctica, the water in front of the glaciers is too hot,” he said. This causes melting of the underside of the glaciers where they grind against the seabed. The melting lessens the friction and allows the glaciers then to slide more quickly into the ocean and therefore become thinner.

Separate research published in January found that ice loss from the entire Antarctic continent had increased six-fold since the 1980s, with the biggest losses in the west. The new study indicates West Antarctica has caused 5mm of sea level rise since 1992, consistent with the January study’s findings.

The expansion of the oceans as they warm and the vast melting in Greenland are the main current causes of the rising oceans, but Antarctica is the biggest store of ice. The East Antarctic ice sheet contains enough ice to raise sea levels by about 60 metres. It had been considered stable, but research in December found even this stronghold was showing signs of melting.

“Before we had useful satellite measurements from space, most glaciologists thought the polar ice sheets were pretty isolated from climate change and didn’t change rapidly at all,” Shepherd said. “Now we know that is not true.”

Posted by: AGelbert

Friday, May 17, is Endangered Species Day. Now more than ever, plants and animals are threatened by a combination of habitat loss and climate change. Below are a few quick facts about endangered species in the United States and around the world.

The frozen continent of Antarctica contains the vast majority of all freshwater on Earth. Now that ice is melting at an accelerating rate, in part because of climate change. What does this transformation mean for coastal communities across the globe? William Brangham reports from Antarctica on the troubling trend of ice loss and how glaciers can serve as a climate record from the past.

Posted by: AGelbert

CO2 Levels Hit 415 Parts Per Million for First Time in Over 3 Million YearsJON QUEALLY, COMMON DREAMS

The measurement taken at the Mauno Loa Observatory in Hawaii by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows the continuing upward trend of atmospheric carbon concentration that lies at the heart of the global warming and climate crisis. While scientists have stated that much of the future warming is already "locked in," humanity's main focus must be to reverse the emissions trend.

Posted by: AGelbert

In the wake of capitalism's colossal failure, how should the world economy change in order to tackle the interlinked challenges of catastrophic climate change and rapidly rising inequality? Finnish biophysical economist Paavo Järvensivu, discusses a new framework his interdisciplinary research team of scientists has outlined in a forthcoming report for the transformation of our political, economic and cultural systems toward mitigating and adapting to climate change.

This week, Koch Congressman turned Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did his job and denied the reality of the impacts of climate change. In reference to the melting Arctic, Pompeo recognized that old fashioned “nu uh!” denial wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, he suggested that the melt would be beneficial because it would open up new trade routes and cut down on shipping times.

Given that this happened concurrently with a new UN report warning that human activity puts a million species at risk of extinction, the comments were an easy target for late night comedy. Seth Meyers, for example, spent a few minutes ridiculing Pompeo’s position, saying it’s like “being excited your house burned down, because now you can see your pool from the driveway” and that making money off of a disaster is literally the plot of The Producers. (“It’s spring time, for everyone, all of the time!”)

Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, went a little more risque, using the extinction report and Pompeo’s comments to set up a mock-PSA featuring George Clooney fundraising for a new organization: United to Defeat Untruthful Misinformation and Support Science, or, UDUMASS. Showing clips of Trump’s “windmills cause cancer” nonsense and James Inhofe’s snowball stunt, Clooney warns of how “rampant dumbfuckery now threatens our health, our security, and our planet.”

In the Twittersphere, Dr. Michael Mann pointed out that Pompeo’s suggestion that maybe there’s an upside to climate change is just one of the many permutations of denial. And it’s hardly unique to climate change.

A paper on denial back in 1993 lays out a sort of spectrum of denial. Though focused on cancer patients who refuse to accept their diagnosis, the parallels are straightforward. There’s complete denial, where a patient simply refuses to accept the cancer diagnosis, akin to deniers who refuse to accept that scientists have diagnosed the cause of climate change as human activity. Then there’s the denial of the implications of the diagnosis, where they accept that they have cancer but reject the idea that it’s serious and life-threatening. We see this in arguments that admit the climate is changing, but reject calls to reduce fossil fuel use.

The next step, one closer to reality, is denial of the effects, where patients “minimize the extent to which they are distressed” by the knowledge of their diagnosis. Patients in this stage of denial mostly avoid the issue, and are “focused on suppressing anxieties.” In other words, this is representative of folks who recognize that climate change is a problem, but consider it too daunting to deal with. Finally, there’s acceptance, when patients finally reckon with the reality, and “might see cancer as a problem that has to be dealt with.”

For decades, fossil fuel defenders have been able to stay in the “complete denial” phase because symptoms of climate change were hard to see. But now, with the Arctic actively melting, denial is becoming untenable.

Obviously, the 🦕🦖Kochs aren’t going to just up and allow their network to embrace calls to transition off of fossil fuels. Deniers are instead turning to arguments like Pompeo’s, embracing a term Naomi Klein popularized: “disaster capitalism.”

This is really where the comparison between psychological denial, like in cancer patients, and professional denial, like Pompeo’s, ends. While cancer patients’ denial is an emotional defense, those who rely on the 😈 fossil ☠️ fuel industry are motivated by money, and therefore are capable of accepting that fossil fuels cause climate change without also accepting the implication that we should eliminate fossil fuel use.

Posted by: AGelbert

Every time we believe that we have hit bottom with this Trump administration, we realize that the depths of the stupidity, corruption and malfeasance is beyond comprehension. We just get glimpses of the tip of the iceberg from this gaggle of knaves.

The latest is from Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, who gave comments about the Arctic and rapidly melting sea ice levels.

One must look to make sure it is not April Fools’ Day or perhaps The Onion spoofing reality, but alas, no such luck. Pompeo appeared to find great economic opportunity in the melting ice, stating in Finland: “The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance. It houses 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30 percent of its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore. Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days.

“Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals.”

Not once did the words “climate change” leave his lips. Perhaps 🦕 Pompeo and others who shrug off the Earth’s troubled state have a secret for how their descendants will live in a significantly uninhabitable environment. Rather than look at the risks inherent in melting ice caps, Pompeo and his environmentally backward patrons, the 🦕🦖 Koch brothers, look at the immediate profits.

Every day in this administration, we only see the tip of the iceberg, and that is not healthy for the nation and the course it is on, like the Titanic captain ignoring the warnings.

Melinda Sharpe 👍👍👍It is not a small profit. Isn't it something like 30 trillion just for the oil? They want climate change to continue so they can get at the oil, and other valuables. Anybody watching the new Daniel Sheehan series, the class he is teaching on Trump and the trajectory of Justice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUfOPwUUeas... I think it is the 3rd class on this youtube series that outlines climate change.Like · Reply · 1 · 43m

Tarena DettweilerI'm sick to death of this nightmare. I'm going to end up in a mental institution before all is said and done.Like · Reply · 4 · 1h

Nicole DaménGreat article!

Finnish analysis:

Trump's foreign policy thundered in Rovaniemi

United States brought world politics to the Arctic Summit of 8 countries, but was left standing alone against the other countries

Mike Pompeo held a speech, intented to warn Russia and China, who both drool after the Arctic areas. His speech was considered bizarre, leaving no room for negotiations.…See MoreLike · Reply · 2 · 1h · Edited

Joe DavisHe listen to a BBC broadcast about how China was getting interested in the Artic adn we were being left behind. He's trying to counter Chinese interest. Russia may want to use Chinese capital to open up the artic. With the sanctions Russia is turning elsewhere for capital for their projects. It is a problemLike · Reply · 1 · 1h

F Braun McAshForgot to mention that by the time this happens, the coastal ports for all this trade will be under water.Like · Reply · 3 · 1h

Posted by: AGelbert

Cyclone Kenneth tore over the island of Ibo in northern Mozambique with a fury that left little standing in its wake. DW's Adrian Kriesch accompanied an aid flight to the island and found suffering and desperation with no clear path forward.

The high water forced the U.S. Coast Guard to close a portion of the Mississippi River to all vessel traffic near St. Louis, Missouri. By Brian K. Sullivan (Bloomberg) — The Mississippi River broke a quarter-century flooding record at Rock Island, Illinois. For now, it’s seen as a fairly isolated event — as long as rain […]

ABOUT THE PROGRAMThe Thom Hartmann Program is the leading progressive political talk radio show for political news and comments about Government politics, be it Liberal or Conservative, plus special guests and callers

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Posted by: AGelbert

There is so much I can say, but despite my decades learning and working on climate change, I cannot say it better than 16 year-old Greta Thunberg. I’m going to read a few words from her speech to the UK Parliament on April 23rd, 2019. In the radio show, I only dare to speak in her voice because the audio was poor, interrupted by the flash of press cameras and sounds from the crowd. She said:

“In the year 2030 I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us.

I was fortunate to be born in a time and place where everyone told us to dream big; I could become whatever I wanted to. I could live wherever I wanted to. People like me had everything we needed and more. Things our grandparents could not even dream of. We had everything we could ever wish for and yet now we may have nothing.

Now we probably don’t even have a future any more.

Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once.

You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard.

Is my microphone on? Can you hear me? Because I’m beginning to wonder…

Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.”

Posted by: AGelbert

On September 20th, 2017 record-smashing Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. Thousands died because of it. New science confirms the devastating rains and floods during Maria were far more likely due to climate change.

According to recent data from the US Census Bureau, after the storm about 4% of the population of the island fled for the United States mainland. They are among the new American climate refugees, joining those from Hurricanes Harvey and Katrina.

The new paper is titled “Extreme Rainfall Associated With Hurricane Maria Over Puerto Rico and Its Connections to Climate Variability and Change.” We have reached the lead author, Dr. David J. Keellings, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama.

Posted by: AGelbert

Study: As Climate Crisis Has Worsened, So Has Global Economic Inequality

April 29, 2019

In a new study out by Stanford researchers reviewing half a century of data, researchers found that as rich countries get richer, they also have more temperate climates and face less of the brunt of climate impacts

DIMITRI LASCARIS This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for The Real News Network from Toronto, Canada. The rich get richer and the poor— well, they get climate change impacts. That in a nutshell is the conclusion of a new study by researchers at Stanford University. Entitled Global Warming has Increased Global Economic Inequality, it points to half a century of country-by-country global temperature data, overlaid with G.D.P. data for those same countries. The countries with the highest G.D.P., the study concludes, have more temperate climates and have in turn experienced less severe climate impacts, while consuming the bulk of the world’s fossil fuel resources. The opposite is true of countries with lower G.D.P. It’s increasingly understood that climate change will impact working class people of color around the world, first and foremost. That, even though they did the least to cause the climate crisis. But the new study enshrines the notion and backs it up with decades of fresh data. Here to discuss that data is none other than the report’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh . He is the Kara J. Foundation Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. His research focuses on how climate change could impact agriculture, water resources, and human health. Among other accolades, he has served as a lead author for the Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and he joins us today from Stanford, California. Thank you for coming on to The Real News, Professor Diffenbaugh.

DR. NOAH DIFFENBAUGH My pleasure.

DIMITRI LASCARIS So your article, Professor, was co-written with Stanford Professor Marshall Burke. In simple terms, what did you two determine to be the big picture takeaways from the research you did? What does it add to the body of knowledge on these interwoven topics of global climate change impacts?

DR. NOAH DIFFENBAUGH Well what we found is that global warming has already happened, historically. That’s about one degree Celsius of global warming to date. But that global warming has overall, reduced the per capita G.D.P. in a large swath of countries in the tropics and subtropics. These countries are warm or hot and that’s the primary reason that they’ve experienced these negative impacts from global warming. But they also, in many cases, have low per capita G.D.P., in many cases have large populations, and in most cases have contributed relatively little to the historical greenhouse gas emissions that have cause global warming. So overall, the net effect is that we find robust results to indicate that global warming has already reduced incomes in many poor countries and that even though inequality between the richest and poorest countries has decreased overall over the last half-century or so, global warming has slowed the rate of that progress.

DIMITRI LASCARIS Now in your study you talk about the parabola effect taking place in terms of temperatures in countries around the world and their G.D.P. For those who have not taken a geometry class for a while, what do you mean in this context by the parabola effect?

DR. NOAH DIFFENBAUGH Well so my co-author, Marshall Burke, has led work over the last several years to understand and isolate how temperature fluctuations in different countries around the world affect their growth in G.D.P., their economic growth year-by-year. And so controlling for other factors, looking country-by-country, what they find is that overall colder countries, such as Norway, have experienced a bit faster economic growth in years that are warmer than normal for Norway. And on the other end of the temperature range, hot countries like India have experienced a bit slower economic growth in the years that are warmer than normal for India. And so overall, there is a hill-shaped function where cooler countries have tended to benefit historically in warm years. Warmer countries have tended to have a drag on their economic growth in warm years. And then in the middle, there’s a mathematical optimum in this relationship. The largest economies in the world— the U.S., China, and Japan— are right near that temperature optimum.

DIMITRI LASCARIS In the short-lived sci-fi show, Incorporated, a dystopian society which chronicled the combination of corporate power and climate impacts from the vantage point of the year 2074, a huge chunk of the world’s population flocks to Milwaukee, Wisconsin as climate refugees. Your paper does not get into the refugee discussion, but do you think the data drawn out within your research explains an impetus for why a nice, cold place like Milwaukee could prove an attractive destination a few generations from now? You specifically mentioned the case of Norway in your prior answer, and I know that you deal with Norway is a key case study in your paper. What do you envision is going to happen in terms of these colder climate countries becoming more attractive to increasingly desperate climate refugees?

DR. NOAH DIFFENBAUGH Well so there is empirical research using a similar framework to what we’ve used by other researchers asking that question about migration, this work by Wolfram Schlenker, a Professor at Columbia University. In that work, they’ve analyzed historical records of asylum claims in Europe and have linked back where the asylum claims at the destination country were, which country those migrants were leaving, and then what were the climate conditions in those countries that the migrants left. And they have found a robust increase in that migration during hot years in the country of departure, controlling for other factors. So they’ve used a very similar econometric framework, as what we’ve used in this paper, but specifically asked the question that you’re asking in terms of whether or not there is a contribution of climate shocks, climate conditions, to migration. Their results suggest that there has been historically, at least for European asylum claims.

DIMITRI LASCARIS Lastly, what do you hope your study achieves in the broader discourse about climate change solutions, in areas like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? Why did you choose to release the paper on an open source basis?

DR. NOAH DIFFENBAUGH So those are two questions. In terms of the policy relevance, there are a couple of results that are relevant for ongoing policy discussions. As you mentioned earlier, it has been discussed for many, many years by many, many people— researchers, policymakers, treaty negotiators within the U.N. climate treaty framework. It’s been observed for a long time that the populations in countries that are most vulnerable to climate change, in general, have contributed relatively little to the total global greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming. What’s new about our paper is that we provide country-by-country estimates of the impact of that historical global warming on the economic outcomes at the aggregate level for each country. So I think that prior to our paper, if someone was making that statement about the asymmetry between vulnerability to climate change and responsibility for the greenhouse gas emissions, they would’ve been hard pressed to provide quantitative figures, quantitative numbers of what the magnitude of that disparity has been, and our paper provides that quantification.

DIMITRI LASCARIS And I realize I did ask two questions. The latter being, why did you choose to release the paper on an open source basis?

DR. NOAH DIFFENBAUGH Our research is relevant for the scientific community. It’s relevant for policymakers. Overall, my research program has been funded. I’ve been a principal investigator for more than 15 years, both at a public university, Purdue University, and now at Stanford at a private university. At both of those universities as principal investigator, I have received federal funding to support my research program.I certainly consider my responsibility to make the results of my research program accessible to the public.

DIMITRI LASCARIS Well we’ve been speaking to Professor Noah Diffenbaugh from Stanford University about a new study regarding the relationship between global inequality and climate change impacts. Thank you very much for joining us today, Professor.

DR. NOAH DIFFENBAUGH It’s been my pleasure. Thank you.

DIMITRI LASCARIS And this is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for The Real News Network.

It is palpable now. Even the most ardent deniers of human-caused climate disruption can feel the convulsions wracking the planet.

I truly believe this, given that, essentially, we are all of and from the Earth. Deep down inside all of us is the “fight or flight” instinct. Like any other animal, our very core knows when we are in danger, as the converging crises descend ever closer to home, wherever we may find ourselves on the globe.

This anxiety that increases by the day, this curious dread of what our climate-disrupted future will bring, is difficult to bear. Even those who have not already lost homes or loved ones to climate disruption-fueled extreme weather events have to live with the burden of this daily tension.

The signs of our overheated planet abound, and another collection of recent reports and studies shows things are only continuing to accelerate as human-caused climate disruption progresses.

A recently published study showed that Earth’s glaciers are now melting five times more rapidly than they were in the 1960s.

“The glaciers shrinking fastest are in central Europe, the Caucasus region, western Canada, the U.S. Lower 48 states, New Zealand and near the tropics,” lead author Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich told Time Magazine. Glaciers in those places are losing an average of more than 1 percent of their mass each year, according to the study. “In these regions, at the current glacier loss rate, the glaciers will not survive the century,” added Zemp.

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization announced that extreme weather events impacted 62 million people across the world last year. In 2018, 35 million people were struck by flooding, and Hurricanes Florence and Michael were just two of 14 “billion-dollar disasters” in 2018 in the U.S. More than 1,600 deaths were linked to heat waves and wildfires in Europe, Japan and the U.S. The report also noted the last four years were the warmest on record.

Extreme weather events impacted 62 million people across the world last year.

As an example of this last statistic, another report revealed that Canada is warming at twice the global rate. “We are already seeing the effects of widespread warming in Canada,” Elizabeth Bush, a climate science adviser at Environment Canada, told TheGuardian. “It’s clear, the science supports the fact that adapting to climate change is an imperative.”

Another recent report showed that the last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere (412 ppm), in the Pliocene Epoch 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, sea levels were 20 meters higher than they are right now, trees were growing at the South Pole, and average global temperatures were 3 to 4 degrees Centigrade (3°-4° C) warmer, and even 10°C warmer in some areas. NASA echoed the report’s findings.

And if business as usual continues, emissions will only accelerate. The International Energy Agency announced that global carbon emissions set a record in 2018, rising 1.7 percent to a record 33.1 billion tons.

Earth

The impact of runaway emissions is already upon us. Several cities in the northern U.S., such as Buffalo, Cincinnati and Duluth, are already preparing to receive migrants from states like Florida, where residents are beset with increasing flooding, brutal heat waves, more severe and frequent hurricanes, sea level rise, and a worse allergy season. City planners in the aforementioned cities are already preparing by trying to figure out how to create jobs and housing for an influx of new residents.

Indications of the climate disruption refugee crisis are even more glaring in some other countries.

Large numbers of Guatemalan farmers already have to leave their landdue to drought, flooding, and increasingly severe extreme weather events.

In low-lying Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of people are already in the process of being displaced from coastal homes, and are moving into poverty-stricken areas of cities that are already unprepared to receive the influx of people. Given that 80 percent of the population of the country already lives in a flood plain, the crisis can only escalate with time as sea level rise continues to accelerate.

The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, known as the “Doomsday Vault,” has already been altered by climate disruption impacts.

Meanwhile, diseases spread by mosquitoes are also set to worsen in our increasingly warm world. A recently published study on the issue shows that over the next three decades, half a billion more people could be at risk of mosquito-delivered diseases.

Other migrations are occurring as well. In Canada’s Yukon, Indigenous elders told the CBC that caribou and moose are moving further north than ever before in order to escape the impacts of climate disruption like warmer summers, lakes and rivers that don’t freeze, and adjusting their migrations to find more food. This has deep impacts on the survival and culture of the area’s Indigenous residents.

In economic news, a researcher for the Federal Reserve Bank recently penned a letter urging central banks to note the financial risks, and possibly an impending financial crisis, brought about by climate disruption. “Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts,” read the letter, “climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.”

Another report showed that climate disruption is already negatively impacting fruit breeders, and consumers will soon feel the pain of higher prices. “We are seeing industries that may not survive if we don’t find a solution, and we are only just seeing the consequences of climate change,” Thomas Gradziel, of the University of California at Davis, told The Washington Post.

Underscoring all of this, the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, known as the “Doomsday Vault,” has already been altered by climate disruption impacts. The primary impacts thus far have been floodingaround the vault, given how warm temperatures have become across the Arctic. The Doomsday Vault holds nearly one million seeds from around the globe, and functions as a backup in case climate disruption, war, famine, or disease wipes out certain crops. In other words, it’s a backup plan to backup plans. A recent report showed that climate change’s impacts on the seed vault could get worse as snow season shortens, heavier and more frequent rainfalls escalate, and avalanches and mudslides near the vault become more common.

Lastly in this section, researchers recently warned that the Arctic has now entered an “unprecedented state” that is literally threatening the stability of the entire global climate system. Their paper, “Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971–2017,” with both American and European climate scientists contributing, warned starkly that changes in the Arctic will continue to have massive and negative impacts around the globe.

“Because the Arctic atmosphere is warming faster than the rest of the world, weather patterns across Europe, North America, and Asia are becoming more persistent, leading to extreme weather conditions,” Jason Box, the lead author of the paper said.

Water

As usual, there continue to be ample examples of the impacts of climate disruption in the watery realms of the planet.

In oceans, most of the sea turtles now being born are female; a crisis in sea turtle sex that is borne from climate disruption. This is due to the dramatically warmer sand temperatures where the eggs are buried. At a current ratio of 116/1 female/male, clearly this trend cannot continue indefinitely if sea turtles are to survive.

The town of Deadhorse in northern Alaska was 23 degrees above normal for the entire month of March.

An alarming study showed recently that the number of new corals on the Great Barrier Reef has crashed by 89 percent after the mass bleaching events of 2016 and 2017. With coral bleaching events happening nearly annually now across many of the world’s reefs, such as the Great Barrier, we must remember that it takes an average of a decade for them to recover from a bleaching event. This is why some scientists in Australia believe the Great Barrier Reef to be in its “terminal stage.”

The UN recently sounded the alarm that urgent action is needed if Arab states are to avoid a water emergency. Water scarcity and desertification are afflicting the Middle East and North Africa more than any other region on Earth, hence the need for countries there to improve water management. However, the per capita share of fresh water availability there is already just 10 percent of the global average, with agriculture consuming 85 percent of it.

Another recent study has linked shrinking Arctic sea ice to less rain in Central America, adding to the water woes in that region as well.

In Alaska, warming continues apace. The Nenana Ice Classic, a competition where people guess when a tripod atop the frozen Nenana River breaks through the ice each spring, has resulted in a record this year of the earliest river ice breakup. It broke the previous record by nearly one full week.

Meanwhile, the pace of warming and the ensuing change across the Bering Sea is startling scientists there. Phenomena like floods during the winter and record low sea ice are generating great concern among scientists as well as Indigenous populations living there. “The projections were saying we would’ve hit situations similar to what we saw last year, but not for another 40 or 50 years,” Seth Danielson, a physical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told The Associated Press of the diminishing sea ice.

In fact, people in the northernmost community of the Canadian Yukon, the village of Old Crow, are declaring a climate disruption State of Emergency. The chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in the Yukon, Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm, has stated that his community’s traditional way of life is at stake, including thawing permafrost and rivers and lakes that no longer freeze deeply enough to walk across in the winter, making hunting and fishing difficult and dangerous. He said that declaring the climate emergency is his community’s responsibility to the rest of the planet.

Other signs of the dramatic warming across the Arctic abound. On Denali, North America’s highest mountain (20,310 feet), more than 66 tons of frozen feces left by climbers on the mountain are expected to begin thawing out of the glaciers there as early as this coming summer.

Another study found that tall ice cliffs around Greenland and the Antarctic are beginning to “slump,” behaving like soil and rock in sediment do before they break apart from the land and slide down a slope. Scientists believe the slumping ice cliffs may well be an ominous sign that could lead to more acceleration in global sea level rise, as far more ice is now poised to melt into the seas than previously believed.

In New Zealand, following the third hottest summer on record there, glaciers have been described by scientists as “sad and dirty,” with many of them having disappeared forever. Snow on a glacier protects the ice underneath it from melting, so this is another way scientists measure how rapidly a glacier can melt — if the snow is gone and the blue ice underneath it is directly exposed to the sun, it’s highly prone to melting. “Last year, the vast majority of glaciers had snowlines that were off the top of the mountain, and this year, we had some where we could see snowlines on, but they were very high,” NIWA Environmental Science Institute climate scientist Drew Lorrey told the New Zealand Herald. “On the first day of our survey, we observed 28 of them, and only about six of them had what I would call a snowline.”

Lastly in this section, another study warned that if emissions continue to increase at their current rate, ice will have all but vanished from European Alpine valleys by 2100. The study showed that half of the ice in the Alps’ 4,000 glaciers will be gone by 2050 with only the warming that is already baked into the system from past emissions. The study warned that even if we ceased all emissions at this moment, two-thirds of the ice will still have melted by 2100.

Fire

Washington State, in the traditionally damp and moist Pacific Northwest, has already had 50 wildfires this year. The state normally doesn’t see this number until the end of summer from late August through October, which is normally the peak of wildfire season.

Air

Record-high temperatures continue to be set globally, especially in the Arctic.

High temperatures in March across the state of Alaska obliterated records. The statewide temperature for the entire month smashed the previous record by a whopping 4°F. Most rivers are melting out early, the town of Deadhorse in northern Alaska was 23 degrees above normal for the entire month of March, and for many days that month the industrial settlement near the Prudhoe Bay oil fields was 30 to 40 degrees above normal. Anchorage saw seven days with a record-high temperature for March, Juneau saw 10, Utquiagvik (formerly Barrow) saw six, as did Yakutat. Warmer temperature anomalies there have now become the norm.

Trump has signed executive orders to speed up oil and gas pipeline projects, making it harder for states to block construction projects due to environmental concerns.

Distressingly, another study revealed that melting permafrost across the Arctic could now be releasing 12 times as much nitrous oxide as previously thought. Nitrous oxide is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas, 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and can remain in the atmosphere for 114 years.

Recent research shows that Canada’s Arctic is now the warmest it has been in 10,000 years, and the temperatures are continuing to climb. Duane Froese, a professor at the University of Alberta and a co-author of the recent study on the topic, told the CBC,

“I would guess we’re getting back over 100,000 years since we’ve seen temperatures at least this warm.”

Another study has warned that climate disruption is set to raise Pittsburgh temperatures to the level of those of the southern U.S. states by 2080 … meaning the city of Pennsylvania will feel more like Jonesboro, Arkansas. That means Pittsburgh will be 10°F warmer, with summers 18 percent drier, and winters 45 percent wetter.

Scientists have warned that extreme hemispheric heat waves like that which occurred during 2018 are becoming more common due to climate disruption. They warn that these massive heatwaves will cover wider areas, and with just 2°C of warming (we are currently at 1.1°C) most summers will look like that of 2018. “From May to July, the heat waves affected 22 percent of the agricultural land and populated areas in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, from Canada and the United States to Russia, Japan and South Korea, killing hundreds of people, devastating crops and curtailing power production,” Inside Climate Newswrote of the study. “On an average day during those heat waves, 5.2 million square kilometers (about 2 million square miles) were affected by extreme heat, [Martha Vogel, an extreme-temperature researcher with ETH Zürich Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science] said. At its peak extent in July, the affected area was twice as big.”

Another report has warned that warming temperatures across the globe could release into the atmosphere long-frozen radiation — from atomic bombs, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Radioactive particles are very light, and therefore, were transported very long distances across the atmosphere after nuclear detonations or radiological accidents. When the radioactive particles fall as snow, they can be stored in ice fields and glaciers for decades. If climate disruption melts the ice, the radiation is washed downstream and spreads throughout ecosystems.

Caroline Clason, a lecturer in physical geography at the University of Plymouth affiliated with the study, said an example of how this is already playing out came from Sweden, when wild boar there were found to have 10 times the levels of normal radiation in 2017. The radiation is likely to have come from Chernobyl, although radiation from all of these nuclear accidents is capable of spreading globally.

Denial and Reality

While this certainly comes as no surprise, yet another report came out highlighting how oil and gas giants are spending millions of dollars in their ongoing effort to lobby their paid politicians to block policies aimed at addressing climate disruption. The giant fossil fuel companies are spending an average of $200 million annually to weaken and/or oppose legislation aimed at addressing climate disruption. BP led the way in spending with $53 million, followed by Shell ($49 million), ExxonMobil ($41 million), Chevron and Total ($29 million each).

Meanwhile, as per usual, President Donald Trump has signed executive orders to speed up oil and gas pipeline projects, making it harder for states to block construction projects due to environmental concerns.

Yet, as the White House is actively denying climate disruption and working as hard as it can to promote fossil fuel use, the U.S. military is planning and preparing for dealing with the vast impacts of ongoing climate disruption. “People are acting on climate not for political reasons, but [because] it really affects their mission,” Jon Powers, an Iraq War veteran who served as the federal chief sustainability officer who is now president and chief executive of the investment firm CleanCapital, told The Washington Post. “With the military, it’s now ingrained in the culture and mission there, which I think is the biggest change over the last 10 years.”

Meanwhile, a federal climate disruption study panel and advisory group that was disbanded by the Trump administration due to it not having enough members “from industry,” recently released a report warning that the muddled political response to very clear climate science is putting Americans at risk.

“We were concerned that the federal government is missing an opportunity to get better information into the hands of those who prepare for what we have already unleashed,” Richard Moss, a visiting scientist at Columbia University, who previously chaired the federal panel and is a member of the group who released the report, told The Guardian. “We’re only just starting to see the effects of climate change, it’s only going to get much worse. But we haven’t yet rearranged our daily affairs to adapt to science we have.”

With each passing month, the impacts of runaway climate disruption continue to intensify. And as they do, so must our awareness of what is happening across the planet, and our resolve to take action to address it – especially since most governments around the world are failing to meet these challenges.

Posted by: AGelbert

NASA scientist Peter Kalmus explains how he slashed 90% of his personal emissions. Senior South American reporter Sue Branford warns the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the planet, is not just dying. It is being murdered. Then we hear 16-year-old Greta Thunberg‘s speech to the European Parliament.

We live in times of faint hope amid darkening despair. Last week an ancient cathedral burned, a criminal politician got away with it, a climate lawyer super-glued herself to Shell headquarters. Last week we pumped millions of tons of global warming carbon into the air, more species staggered toward extinction, and a 16 year old girl tried to wake Europe and the world. I’m Alex Smith. This is Radio Ecoshock.

Lately I am discouraged. After 13 years of helping to communicate climate danger directly from the world’s great scientists, we are still drifting toward the black hole of a super-heated world where most species perish. Climate programs are still a niche on the fringe. I’m chronically broke, chronically sore, and wonder why I carry on.

Of course, we are not alone. This story from ClimateHomeNews says a lot: Farhana Yamin, quote: “is a legal expert who has advised various developing countries in climate negotiations… On Tuesday, she told Climate Home News that the Paris Agreement, which she helped negotiate in 2015, was “not delivering”.

“I thought that was my story,” she said. “I thought that the law and science and speaking truth to power worked. That we would be able to act with kindness and in time and on the basis of the precautionary principle and all these lovely ideas that we enshrined in law in the early 80s and 90s.

“And we haven’t done that and that’s because these guys [Shell] knew and have stopped it. It’s not some random delay, this delay has been planned in the system, it’s been financed, it’s been lobbied for. So that’s why today, I feel totally comfortable and I wish I’d done it sooner, had woken up to the power dynamics and not been so naive.”

That is also how I feel about the failure of American Democracy to defend itself against a takeover by big money and foreign governments. I thought there might still be some justice left. Now I feel naive, again.

But remember, while mainstream media carries us on through each country’s passion play of politics and corruption, we humans fill the skies with millions of fuel-laden airplanes, we operate billions of oil and gas engines. We suck up the wild spaces and fill every living belly with plastic.

That is the real cathedral burning down daily, the cathedral of life.

Let our prayers for salvationbe our actions, large and small.

I’m Alex Smith.Please help support my on-going work with your donation, large or small.Thank you for being brave enough to keep listening to Radio Ecoshock.

We go out with a bit from Eliza Gilkyson’s fine song, “The Great Correction”. It fits so well.

“People ’round here don’t know what it means to suffer at the hands or our American dream turn their backs on the grisly scene, chasing frivolous stunts

They got their God, they got their guns, got their armies and the Chosen Ones,But we’ll all be burnin’ in the same big sun, when the Great Correction comes.”

Posted by: AGelbert

► New book “Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming” warns climate change could cost $600 trillion — twice the world’s total wealth — in damages by the end of the century

► In the history of mankind, 50% of all carbon released into the atmosphere occurredin the last 30 years

► The burning of fossil fuels and chemical-intensive industrial agriculture are the main drivers of climate change ► The good news is that humans have the power to stop, and potentially reverse, climate change, but the solution is not fancy new carbon-capturing technology

►The best solution to climate change is to harness the power of Mother Nature in the form of organic regenerative agriculture and the restoration of forests, peatlands, mangroves and other ecosystem habitats capable of drawing down and storing excess atmospheric carbon

ProductiehuisEUPublished on Feb 21, 2019This morning, Swedish young climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, has once again given a rousing speech on the climate crisis to defend schoolchildren who went on strike last week.

The teenager opened a European Commission event in front of President Jean-Claude Juncker where she told politicians to stop ‘sweeping their mess under the carpet for our generation to clean up’.

Greta, from Sweden, defended the hundreds of thousands of children who took part in global school strikes saying: ‘If you say we are wasting valuable lesson time, let me remind you, our political leaders have wasted decades through denial and inaction and since our time is running out we have started to take action.’

#GretaThunberg#Youth4Climate

Category News & Politics

Posted by: AGelbert

WWF UKPublished on Apr 24, 2019Greta Thunberg started striking from school, starting the Fridays for Future movement and calling out our global leaders on their climate inaction. Here she delivers a compelling speech to UK MPs.

Posted by: AGelbert

Published on Nov 21, 2017Rising ocean waters, scorching temperatures, food scarcity, and disease – here's how humans could ultimately be responsible for the end of the world.» Subscribe to NowThis: http://go.nowth.is/News_Subscribe

Agelbert NOTE: The following alarming, but still too conservative, MIT study EXCLUDES the ABRUPT climate change positive feedback loop effects we are now beginning to experience.